Dying a Tru-Spec khaki flightsuit to GB1 grey

Equipment Uniforms
1

Last night I finally got around to dying my Khaki Tru-Spec flightsuit and I must say I think it turned out pretty good!

I ended up using a galvanized steel wash tub and the ‘stove top’ method of color stripping and dying. I color stripped my flightsuit, elbow pads & belt all together - then I dyed my suit alone, I’ve yet to dye my elbow pads and belt (the belt succumbed to the color stripper and has rusted a bit around the eyelets and has knocked all of the black off the fasteners.)

Here’s the Tru-Spec flighsuit with the patches laying on it in it’s normal khaki color and a flash.

And after it’s dyed with the flash on - I think it looks spot on to when the boys first enter the Sedgewick, at least the contrast between black and the main color looks good to me!

The suit without any flash, which is strange because in person it’s a darker grey- no khaki or brown to speak of, sometimes it even looks like a very light sage green.

Finally a picture of me in the dyed suit, flash on, no patches (obviously)… I even have the Ghostbusters gut.

Alright, on to the details of the color stripping and dying process if anyone wants to dye their khaki Tru-Spec and likes what mine looks like.

Color strip:

2 boxes RIT color stripper

6 gallons of water

cook on stove top for 1 hour, lightens it up a bit… make sure you don’t do what I did and set the tub on the stove’s knobs (I had no choice because of how it’s situated) while you’re cooking, it scorches the hell out of them and makes them hotter’n a bitch to turn off!

squeeze the excess water out of the flightsuit then do a cold wash (extra rinse cycle if you can) and move back to the stove top with your suit.

dying process:

2 boxes of RIT pearl grey

1 cup salt

1 tablespoon of laundry detergent

5 gallons of water (I used enough to cover the suit, and it worked out well!)

I didn’t agitate the strip bath very much, but I agitated during the entire color dying process - I’m not sure if it makes a big difference, it’s just what I did!

30 minutes cooking in the dye bath and then pull it out, follow the directions on the box - rinse it in hot water, then gradually cooler water until it runs clear. Then squeeze it out and move it to the washer (cold, normal cycle with a little bit of detergent) and the dryer.

And that’s all she wrote! Hope this helps someone/anyone!

-Tyler

2

Looks good. Thanks for the tutorial. I’m not sure what I’ll do for my husband’s suit, but it’s always good to hear what other people have done and see the results. :slight_smile:

3

No problem! There’s some more tutorials on this forum, but I didn’t see any for the Tru-Spec brand khaki colored flightsuit so I figured I’d do one since that was the brand and color my team and I went with. I figured there’d be a little larger response to this, but no worries - as long as it helps someone out the time I spent writing this up wasn’t in vain :slight_smile:

Hope it helps you out!

-Tyler

4

Tyler,

The recipe you posted is very similar to what I did with my Rothco flightsuits, so it would probably translate well between both. The last one I did with good results was 4 boxes of color stripper for 1 hour followed by 3 boxes of Pearl Grey / 3 cap fulls of purple liquid in a full washer load with 2 suits for 1 hour. Of course, the cup of salt and tsp of detergent were also added to the dye mix but that’s no different than your recipe. The reason I used 3 boxes of grey dye instead of 4 was because I could only locate 3 boxes at various stores and got impatient. However I really like the outcome. I do have to say that in my various dyeing trials I didn’t notice a huge difference between the 4 box recipe and the 3 box recipe. These recipes were of course tried on new suits each time (in order to give the forums an accurate “from scratch” recipe) and while I am sure the suits would vary slightly between both, it isn’t what I feel is a night and day kind of difference.

The only thing I would probably do differently the next time around is to wash the suits after dyeing in Retayne. I recently ordered some and it seemed to lock dye in really well on my most recent costume project. However, the patches were already on my GB suits so I decided not to mess with it. Maybe if I get adventurous I’ll try another batch of suits but in all honesty I’m not going to be wearing these every day and I don’t plan on getting drenched in them so the dye job as it is should weather fairly well.

I think there should be a sticky in this forum where all of us can post our dye recipes along with pictures to make it a little easier for others to reference. Anyone else think this is a good idea?

5

Yeah, I saw that the recipes were pretty close. Heck, mine was almost exactly the way the box told to dye it - but I used one less gallon of water. I just figured I’d put it up with pictures and stuff because of the difference in the brand of suit, and I noticed that the Tru-Spec suits have a higher polyester percentage than the Rothco suits.

I think a sticky topic on dying would be good, it’d be nice to have a concise listing of different brands and types of suit material.

-Tyler

6

Looking good there slick, I just ordered my patches and defender volleyball knee(elbow) pads. I picked up 2 boxes of RIT pearl gray and 2 boxes RIT color remover. I’m gonna follow your instructions to a T. I have to order the suit now and i wanted to ask, how much did your suit shrink after you dyed it and how many sizes over do you recommend getting the suit? how was the length when you bought it?

7

Well I’m 5’9" approx 175lbs and a medium would be perfect for me if it wouldn’t shrink. I bought a large just to be safe and I should have gone with an extra large with how much it shrank in the hot water. It still fits fine, but I think the name patch on it is a little too high (had to be to stay level and not interfere with the breast pocket.)

-Tyler

8

Tyler,

Check out this screen shot from GB2 of a Spengler uniform. The name patch does not cover the zipper, but it comes pretty close to touching. I think you will be able to move the patch down a bit and still be screen accurate. You can probably also move the patch a bit closer to the main zipper as well. You have exactly the same number of letters in your name as the “ZEDDEMORE” tag, so if they got that one to fit you shouldn’t have any problems with yours either. I think it is perfectly okay to cover a bit of the top part of the pocket so long as you don’t interfere with the zipper. Anyways, here is the screen shot I am talking about:

http://www.gbfans.com/image.php?url=/images/equipment/reference/9/14.jpg

9

Yeah, I saw that. Where mine is right now is very close to the center zipper and just touches the stitching for the pocket zipper. I could probably move it down a bit and I probably will at some point. I did however do a light bit of ironing on the patch to keep it in place while I had it sewn. If I can’t do that I’ll probably just get another set of patches and a larger suit.

So far the suit has held up very well at Comicon this year and the patch doesn’t look too awful.

-Tyler

10

great suit and tutorial! I just wanted to chirp in since I also have a Tru-Spec flight suit, but another dye recipe and process if anyone wants to try.

The flight suit is the $35 Deluxe Air Force Style Flight Suit By Tru-Spec from armysurplusforless.com

It was too khaki for me, so I dyed it.

Dying process (washing machine)

  • in 2.25 cups boiling water, mix 1 packet Rit Pearl Grey and .25 packet Navy Blue

  • agitate in hot water for 30 min (keep resetting to agitate so it doesn’t drain!), switch to cold water during rinse

  • warm/cold cycle

  • use a couple cups of bleach and hot water to rinse out any residual dye in the washer

this entire process was done twice with a few weeks in between since I wasn’t quite happy with the first run

end result, though it’s actually a little darker in person

image

click the pic for more

Here’s a better shot of the color, it’s amazing how different these things look in different lighting

image

11

Awesome, man, looks great! I didn’t ever get pictures of my suit with the patches and everything sewed on so here’s a post of mine. I like the grey of yours, but I’m pretty happy with mine (read: I don’t want to re-do mine)

John’s (keoni) pack, Robyn (Clara), Jeff (Vork) and Vince (Bladezz) from The Guild.

And a good comparison shot for color - John and I.

-Tyler

12

Hey Cythlusly just used your recipe on my uniform and it came out pretty awesome thanks for the recipe!

13

Question: does the suit shrink at all when you follow these processes?

I just got our suits today via fe ex, and mine’s a bit tight across the rib cage (odd, since it’s fine around my belly) I’m just concerned that trying this might make it even smaller, even though these are used suits that should be shrunk as much as they probably ever could be.

Hmmm could just forgo dinner until Halloween night…

14

Glad everyone who’s used this has liked it!

Yes, it does shrink a bit - due to the heat (I think; I washed this thing a couple times in cold water and it didn’t shrink until after dying it) if you need to, just use hot water out of the tap, don’t heat the tub and dye as above. If it doesn’t come out the colour you want, give it a second dye bath.

I don’t think you’re gonna lose weight in your chest (probably muscle weight, eh?) by not eating for 29 days!

-Tyler

Oh, you said yours is used - is it a Tru-Spec? How much did you pay for it?

15

The suit will shink quite a bit if you put it in boiling water. Not only around the waist, but the length of the legs as well. I had an XL suit which was way too baggy and had legs much too long and it shrank to a perfect fit when I boiled it several times.

If I were you, and my suit was already tight, I would try putting the suit in a plastic trash bin (white) with the dye remover and just enough warm tap water to cover the suit after you’ve gotten the air bubbles out, for the night. Then in the morning, wash it in warm water with detergent, and dry on low heat.

Then using only warm water again, add your dye (see a thread I posted on dying suits for the amounts, if you have a yelowish Rothco suit, otherwise you might not want any purple dye) and let it soak for a couple hours, agitating it every once ina while.

I don’t know how well warm water will work for dying the suit, but if it doesn’t work the first time, try to guage how much the shade changed for the amount of time you put it in and then either increase the amount of dye, or let it soak longeer.

You will have to wash and dry the suit to tell what color it has become though. You can’t tell when it’s wet, because it’s wet and because washing will remove some dye.

Also when putting the dye in the water make sure to sitr it really well. Dye particles will collect on the bottom of the bucket and you will get spots if you don’t make sure it all dissolves.

16

It’s a nomex used, and it was only $19… I’ll call them tomorrow, and see if they hopefully have at least a 48 long. BTW, can a green suit be put through the color remover, and then redone in the gray? They had a lot more green then tan suits.

17

I’m 99% sure it can’t. Nomex if I’m not mistaken is made from artificial fibers, like nylon or rayon, and that makes hard to dye, and impossible to remove any significant amount of color from. My Rothco suit is 40% rayon and no amount of dye remover, even soaking overnight, would do anyhting more than turn it from yellowish to khaki. That’s because the rayon was yellowish and the color didn’t come out of it, but the color did come out of the cotton. That’s also why you put a little purple in with the gray when dying a rotcho suit, because it turns the cotton slightly purple which nullifies the yellow in the rayon and gets you the desired overall greyish color.

Btw, there’s tutorials here on how to dye nomex, look em up. You’ll need to first run it through with a bunch of fabric softener dryer sheets to remove the fireproof coating in order to get any dye to stick.

18

Ugh.. not good news. Hopefully they’ll have a replacement in my size when i call them tomorrow.. I’d even be happy with an overly large one, then too small.

19

There’s lots of sites online which have those nomex suits, so don’t give up if that one place doesn’t have them. :slight_smile:

20

Lots of places have them.. but $169 is kinda out of the question.

I found some for $39, but they weren;t the nomex, but the knock off cotton kind.